Quote:
Originally Posted by newhallone
(Post 1996775)
I picked this up in Upper Michigan at an estate sale today for 5 bucks. I also picked up one of those gold colored triple cone lamps, and a funky blue chair. The Zenith is model number 5540 chassis number 25LC30. IT says Service Saver Hi-Fi Chassis. No uhf on this one. I do not have cable or a decent antenna so I used this modulator and my dvd player with a recorded copy of Mannix. Hot dog it works! It seems my modulator is not the greatest tho I am getting some hot signal in there somewhere (The whites cause buzzing). My camera wasn't working so I had to use my cell which is not the best. The set has good sound to it. Bass, treble and Two speakers!
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Your Zenith is a good set, probably made before 1964 since it doesn't have UHF (as Steve D. mentioned). You should be able to pick up your area's local stations even with a set of rabbit ears, or with whatever type of antenna you have. Where are you located? If you are in a suburb of a good-sized city, your set should get at least one channel.
The buzzing you are hearing is likely caused by the AGC threshold control being set too high or too low. The signal from your DVD player's RF modulator is stronger than any standard TV signal you would receive over the air, so if the AGC is incorrectly set it can cause the RF and IF stages in the set to operate at much higher gain than is actually required. Back it off until the buzz disappears. The only drawback is that you may have to readjust the control if you eventually get cable.
BTW, I like Mannix as well. Watched the show every week when it was new, and for years after that in reruns. I have a subscription to Netflix, so I'll be able to get those old shows on DVD eventually.....Can't seem to get enough of that show, or any other crime drama of the 1970s. (I ordered the entire first and second seasons of
Quincy, a late '70s crime drama formerly on NBC, from Amazon.com and am awaiting the arrival of the disks in my mailbox.)
I grew up in the 1970s and feel that television was a heck of a lot better then than it is now. Thank goodness for DVDs. A lot of old shows have left cable (TV Land has replaced a lot of the old programs it used to show with Movie Land and several so-called TV Land Originals), so DVD is about the only way we can see these old classics.
Your cell-phone camera takes fairly good photos, IMHO; I just looked at one of the thumbnails you attached to your post, and it doesn't look bad at all. I also have a somewhat cheap digital camera (Radio Shack Flatfoto, the first model with a standard optical viewfinder; later versions of this camera have a small color LCD screen for image previews); mine is only 1.3 megapixels, but it takes surprisingly good pictures.
I'd hang on to that Zenith TV as long as it works well for you. That set is an example of very fine workmanship, as Zenith was still handwiring its TVs and stereo gear in the 1960s. In any event, they don't make them like that anymore.
The audio section of your set is very high-end as well, for a TV made in the mid-'60s. Two speakers and bass/treble tone controls were not usually found in TVs of this vintage, but apparently yours is one of Zenith's better consoles. I had a 1963 Zenith b&w 23" console years ago with a 6x9" oval speaker, tone control (only one), and a 6BN6/6BQ5 audio system. Mine sounded so good that I eventually patched an old FM tuner into the audio circuitry; the sound was excellent. I have two Zenith radios today that sound just as good (maybe even better, since the radios have larger speakers and true tone controls), but still I wish I could have held on to that 23" Zenith TV longer than I did. Wasn't a good feeling at all to put that set out for the trash after having restored it with all new tubes.
